Trading To Make An Income

This journal is a place for me to write down my thoughts and analysis. I am not an expert by any means but believe I have found an approach that is consistently profitable. The question is, can I be consistently profitable?

This is the stage I am at right now! I can read price action, I can understand the fundamentals, I have now learned and approach that has proved to be profitable during back testing and some live trading, but I have this amazing ability to wipe out weeks and sometimes months worth of profits in a one days destructive trading!

So essentially I now know the issue is me and this journal is my attempt at being more disciplined. I am hoping that by keeping a journal in the public domain I will be less likely to go off on destructive streaks.

I day trade for cash flow and I swing trade to grow my retirement portfolio.

For my swing trading I focus mainly on the day charts but can enter from a 4 hour chart. I look for areas of confluence in terms of support and resistance and look to trade the price action at these levels. I am mainly a trend trader but am happy to take range trades or counter trend trades from major levels. I will trade this way with forex, commodities, stocks and pretty much anything that will move.

For my day trading I am trading a type of chart that is based on price and not time. Again I trade this a pretty similar way to my longer term trades which is primarily taking bounces off of support and resistance in the direction of the trend.

I think you will see all of this as I progress through my journal. I will try to take pictures as well.

Interesting days trading. Took a loss from my only trade on the GER30 late in the day. But had a win on the EURUSD earlier on so ended up around where I started.

It was actually quite a good days trading as I really stuck to my system and trades where I know in the past I may have taken them, today I didn't... perhaps this journal will be the turning point for me.

Always trade in the direction of the daily chart, never give up, and "The More You Learn, The More You Earn".
And it helps to have a system that will show tops and bottoms, momentum trading you need to learn and the pro's only trade 7 minutes an hour....

So I have decided that I will post my results each day to keep a track of what I am doing, but as well as my real results I am also going to keep a hindsight track record so it will be easy for me to measure where things are going wrong if indeed they do go wrong.

My actual results will be those of the trades I take with real money where real emotions get involved and try to sabotage me, where as the hindsight results are those that would have been had I tried to set and forget the trade.

Keep you updated..

By the way so far this morning I have missed a definite winner already along with taking a BE on another that was 2 pips away from my profit target at one point...

So I haven't been able to trade today and missed the afternoon yesterday.

But looking at the charts this evening it appears I would have missed a whopping 7 winning trades across all of the instruments I trade!

That is 7 winners and not one loser! The question is in the heat of battle would I have taken them all? Perhaps not... and that is of course my biggest issue. But hopefully keeping this journal will help me overcome that.

There is always that little nagging doubt in your head isn't there... you know you have the setups, you know you can do it but when it comes to it you doubt whether your research is correct and your testing and whether your live results have been lucky...

Anyway enough of me babbling on... Lets hope we get some opportunities which I can trade tomorrow...

I haven't posted in a a month... not because I haven't wanted to but because I haven't traded... not properly anyway... I have had to focus on some other things... Anyway I fully intend in the New Year to pick this up again.

I think I will post my entire trading plan over the holidays and start completely afresh in the New Year... sort of like a clean slate so that I can really measure my progress.

I will fund two accounts. A spread betting account for my day trading and a regular brokerage account for my longer term trading. The reason for this is that I don't have so much capital so I can't find a spread betting company with a smaller enough position size for the longer term trading as I will have larger stops.

There is a good chance that my contract will come to an end in April and I have decided that I will use this as an opportunity to see if I can trade for a living completely, without the safety net. Up until now I have always had some other income in the background to support me, but I have now decided that I should really give this a fair crack and hence have decided that I will not look for a new contract in April and instead will focus completely on trading.

So over the next few months I must ensure that I can remain profitable and not have those blow up days. If I can do this then I have permission to give it a real go... if not then I need to continue with employment of some sort...